The hydrogen fuel cell (FC) bus is one of very few options for the elimination of harmful local emissions and the decarbonisation of public transport. Its performance has been validated in Europe in recent years through various demonstration projects, however, a number of actions are required to allow the commercialisation of FC buses. These include addressing the high ownership costs relative to conventional buses, ensuring the FC buses can meet the high availability levels demanded by public transport, developing the refuelling infrastructure to provide reliable, low-cost hydrogen and improving the understanding of the potential of FC buses for zero emission public transport. JIVE will pave the way to commercialisation by addressing these issues through the deployment of 142 fuel cell buses across 8 locations, more than doubling the number of FC buses operating in Europe. JIVE will use coordinated procurement activities to unlock the economies of scale which are required to reduce the cost of the buses. They will operate in large fleets of 10-30 buses, reducing the overhead costs per bus, as well as allowing more efficient supply chains and maintenance operations compared to previous deployments. By working at this scale and with bus OEMs with proven vehicles, JIVE will ensure reliability at the level required for commercialisation. JIVE will also test new hydrogen refuelling stations with the required capacity to serve fleets in excess of 20 buses. This will not only reduce the costs of hydrogen and increase the availability of equipment but will also test the ability to offer >99% reliability, which is required for the commercialisation of FC buses. A dissemination campaign will use the project results to demonstrate the technical readiness of FC buses to bus operators and the economic viability of hydrogen as a zero emission bus fuel to policy makers will help to catalyse the future development and expansion of the hydrogen bus sector.

The overall aim of NewBusFuel is to resolve a significant knowledge gap around the technologies and engineering solutions required for the refuelling of a large number of buses at a single bus depot. Bus depot scale refuelling imposes significant new challenges which have not yet been tackled by the hydrogen refuelling sector: • Scale – throughputs in excess of 2,000kg/day (compared to 100kg/day for current passenger car stations) • Ultra-high reliability – to ensure close to 100% available supply for the public transport networks which will rely on hydrogen • Short refuelling window – buses need to be refuelled in a short overnight window, leading to rapid H2 throughput • Footprint – needs to be reduced to fit within busy urban bus depots • Volume of hydrogen storage – which can exceed 10 tonnes per depot and leads to new regulatory and safety constraints A large and pan-European consortium will develop solutions to these challenges. The consortium involves 10 of Europe’s leading hydrogen station providers. These partners will work with 12 bus operators in Europe, each of whom have demonstrated political support for the deployment of hydrogen bus fleets. In each location engineering studies will be produced, by collaborative design teams involving bus operators and industrial HRS experts, each defining the optimal design, hydrogen supply route, commercial arrangements and the practicalities for a hydrogen station capable of providing fuel to a fleet of fuel cell buses (75-260 buses). Public reports will be prepared based on an analysis across the studies, with an aim to provide design guidelines to bus operators considering deploying hydrogen buses, as well as to demonstrate the range of depot fuelling solutions which exist (and their economics) to a wider audience. These results will be disseminated widely to provide confidence to the whole bus sector that this potential barrier to commercialisation of hydrogen bus technology has been overcome.